Holiday Inn, Rodeway and other hotels and motels and such

Department of Useless Information and other wanderings of the mind.

The first Holiday Inn was built on Summer Ave  in Presleyville, aka Memphis, TN. The second one, and the first outside of Memphis, was built in Jackson, TN. The second hotel I ever spent a night in was the old Maxwell House in Nashville. The Navy paid for it and I remember getting on an elevator in which a drunken woman of later mid years showed immediate interest. Her Maid took immediate protective measures, stopping the elevator long before I reached my floor and shooing me off.

Ah, such is life. Here I was about to be taken advantage of and this Maid person had to start making value judgments.

The first Holiday Inn I stayed in was at Bangor, Maine. I was being transferred from Argentina and on a seven (7) day road trip home for 30 days of leave before I reported to the next duty station. Just my wife and me and two kids in a car that was so full that the kids traveled in the back set… setting, laying and sleeping on a level surface of strategically placed suitcases, with padding, about 6” below the top of the front seats.

Yeah, I know. The PC people would go absolutely nuts today. The kids loved it. They played, slept and accused, “Momma, she pushed me!” 

And it was July …and the car had no air conditioner.

Seven days and neither were harmed by the ride or their parents although there were some moments…....

The only good duty station is the one where you were and the one where you were going.

The next Holiday Inn I stayed in was in Russellville, AR. The Navy was long past and my civilian boss had decided where we should stay. The Railroad YMCA, $4.00 a night. Deciding that they needed me more than I needed them I checked into the Holiday Inn at a special weekly rate of $12.00 a day. I then called my boss’s secretary. I told her what I had done and noted that my companion had joined me only after my threats and that if there were any problems I would check out in the morning and my next stop would be at home on my way to join IBM.

My boss called back immediately and assured me that the problem was with Accounting demanding we spend less but he would “take care of it.” We both knew he was bsing but I wisely thanked him, went down to the ice machine, filled the bucket, beat on my companion’s door and we went to my room, built ourselves a VO and water and tried to figure out which of the three restaurants in town we would have dinner in.

It’s nice to be loved. Even nicer to have a job offer in your pocket.

Russellville was dry as a bone. Nearest place for a drink was 35 miles away at a VFW. Who said life would not have its ups and downs??

Holiday Inns and I have had many more ups than downs but it was at a Rodeway Inn in which I heard the world’s best put down. Three of us were having drinks in the bar when a friend made several hits on the waitress. None were successful in obtaining a telephone number or even the slightest hint he would ever get one.

So we went out with clients and had dinner and came back and got up the next morning and worked all day and met in the same bar the next PM where we had the same waitress serving us. She approached our table, smiled and said, “I hope you all are just fine today!”

To which my friend replied, “Well, I’m still horny.”

Without missing a beat she replied, “Know what honey? In your case I can understand why.”

I made sure she received a very nice tip.

Back during the first energy crunch I stayed at a Holiday Inn that wanted to conserve. It was your typical roadside motel. All of the rooms were entered from the parking lot and had heat pumps under the window. When I got in the room I discovered that the heat pump required the room key to be turned on and if the key was removed it would shut down. It was blue nose cold outside and in the room and I was going to have to go out for supper and come back to a cold room.

So I left the key in the heat pump, went and ate and stopped at the front desk and asked for another key since I had left mine in the room.

In those days of yesteryear room keys were KEYS of METAL not pieces of plastic that will become useless if you carry them in your pocket next to your cell phone.

I got one, went to my WARM room, went to sleep got the next morning and checked out. As I was doing so I asked the clerk if they were saving much electricity with the key in the heat pump thing.

“Don’t know,” she said, “but a lot more people are leaving their keys in the room and needing a second one than they did before we changed the heaters."

Ah, people. They’ll beat a foolish system every time.

I remember thinking how stupid the hotel’s owner was in spending money on something that didn’t save energy and just cost money.

But then I hadn’t yet heard of the manmade global warming hoax and Solyandra.

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper 

 “It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine